


on earth as in heaven

by incarnandine



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mentions of Blood, Nightmares, Pre-Canon, hurt/comfort? in a way, nea/mana shippy if you squint, not more than dgm canon itself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 16:50:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12414123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incarnandine/pseuds/incarnandine
Summary: It was strangely easy to accept that Mana was not - notreally- his brother.





	on earth as in heaven

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from a Globus song
> 
> come say hi on [tumblr](http://incarnandine.tumblr.com), as always!

It was strangely easy to accept that Mana was not - not  _really -_  his brother.

It didn’t bother Nea in the slightest; in fact, he felt somehow relieved - that word limited him, limited everything they were to each other  _so very much_  - and frankly, Nea was fine to get rid of it. What truly bothered him, though, were the nightmares.

The nightmares - the ones with that grotesque, coated figure in a tall hat with a twisted smile, the ones that always, undoubtedly ended with blood and death and the world ending before his very eyes - came just shortly after that single revelation; Nea wondered, sometimes, if one caused the other, or if they were parts of a bigger mess that laid itself upon his life as soon as he turned seventeen.

In most of those dreams, the weird, goblin-like creature turned out to be just an armor, a cover; sometimes, inside of it was Mana - Mana causing all that death, all that havoc, Mana with  _blood_ on his pale, delicate hands; and sometimes, it was Nea himself, and to tell the truth he didn’t know which one was worse.

Fitting, he thought grimly; for they were both, it turned out, one and the same person.

The thought would seem ridiculous to Nea if he didn’t know himself or Mana any better - on the first glance, they seemed as different as day and night, as fire and water; and yet, there was so much of Nea in Mana and so much of Mana in Nea that only the two of them could recognize - and Nea understood, finally, how much _that_ explained things. How they always fit together; for if they could not be one, they needed to be as close as possible.

He realized, too, that this - that  _he himself_ \- was the reason Mana was always so sickly as a child; Nea’s own very existence stole the life forces from him– and  _gods_ , Nea was always so full of life without realizing it was a life stolen from the only person he wished to share it with. The farther Nea was, the better Mana seemed to feel ( _was it why, when he came back home, Mana seemed a bit stronger - and then fell ill just after a few days? was it one of the things Katerina never told them, in fear of scaring her adopted children away– to disappear somewhere just like their father?_ ), and the closer he got, the more he realized there was just one life for the both of them and he needed to learn to  _share_.

So, he subdued himself; the buoyant, loud adventurer turned more quiet, more reserved day by day - and of course he saw the pained look in Mana’s eyes, but then, it was so, so worth it–

_Mana dancing on the streets, learning tricks from circus clowns, black hair whipping freely in the wind, handstands and flips and everything he could only dream of before, and Nea laughed and clapped with tears in his eyes–_

–yes, if he could, he would give everything so that Mana could live like he did, now.

 _Would you?_  the sinister voice in his nightmares whispered between flashes of blood and rubble and hisbloodonMana'shands– _I would_ , Nea responded every time, torn awake by his own screams.

He was the extra, the expendable, the  _fourteenth_ where there could only be thirteen; he was, in reality, not Nea– he was the Other, the  _not-Mana_ , the parasite who fed on the life forces of the one whom he loved the most.

And yet - when he awoke, tear tracks dry on his face and throat raw - one look at the sleeping form curled up next to him, at the long dark lashes and slightly parted lips, inky curls framing a face that was his own and yet not - he knew that as much as he needed Mana, Mana also needed him; their bizarre connection, their shared life went, after all, both ways.

And as much as he wished, he could not disappear just yet; for who would be there to protect that dear life, who would save him from that cruel fate Nea foresaw in his dreams?

A hand darted out from beneath the covers and grasped his own, linking their fingers together. Black eyes blinked slowly, confused, as they looked up at him, and Nea chuckled.

“It’s nothing, Mana,” he whispered, pulling the other closer. “Go back to sleep.”

Whatever was about to unfold, the time for it did not come yet.

It seemed only strangely  _comforting_.


End file.
